


Rauðskinna

by aenor_llelo



Series: For A Diamond Is A Marveled Thing [15]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Familiars, Gen, I Made The Journals Into Actual Grimoires By Accident Sorry Not Sorry, Magic, Pre-Canon, Spooky Artifacts Whispering In Your Ear At Odd Hours, The Journals (Gravity Falls)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23873218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aenor_llelo/pseuds/aenor_llelo
Summary: There was a reason he couldn't bear to see them destroyed, no matter how dangerous they were. He didn't know it then.orThe three familiars of Stanford Pines.
Relationships: Dipper Pines & Ford Pines, Ford Pines & Stan Pines
Series: For A Diamond Is A Marveled Thing [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604959
Comments: 29
Kudos: 401





	Rauðskinna

**Author's Note:**

> _Rauðskinna_ (red skin) is a supposed Icelandic red skinned book with golden runes on its cover, said to be the most terrifying black magic compendium in existence. it was the life's work of a bishop, and it's primary draw was the rumor that it contained spells that could summon and bind Satan himself.

* * *

He'd learned long ago how to bind his own books. Store bought never felt quite _right_. This page too uneven, that spine too rigid. For his life's work, his magnum opus, he would not have anything less than perfect.

So he'd made them himself.

He'd made them, and they bore the mark of his hands. _Devil's hands,_ Ma had called them with a wry smile on her face, and he'd laid them with gold because in this- this oddity, this aberration of his body- he was at home with the madness of his pursuit. The strange. The paranormal. The _unnatural._

One, two, three. The perfect number. The best series were trilogies, after all.

=<>=

Stanford's an odd fellow. And Fiddleford ain't saying it to be cruel. Stanford wasn't the type to dwell much on his past, but Fiddleford knew from the first day he met the man that this is someone who probably never had many friends.

And he really ain't trying to be cruel, but Fiddleford can kind of see _why_.

He's just... a tad... _odd_.

It's not the six fingers. It's not even the whole Why Yes I _Do_ Research The Paranormal In My Isolated Cabin In The Woods, Why Do You Ask attitude. It's other things. Littler things.

He's a polite enough fellow, or at least he tries to be. But sometimes Fiddleford wonders if his college-roommate-turned-boss is a little _touched in the head._

"Y'know, Stanford, I don't think I've seen you touch that book 'f yours all day."

And Ford just blinks all wide-eyed at him (like an owl, Fiddleford can't help but think), absentmindedly pawing at his coat until he finds the weight settled there.

_Seriously, what the hell. He's more skittish than a first time ma whenever his pet books are involved._

"Oh," the man half laughs. "I suppose I haven't. That _is_ a bit strange."

He smiles good naturedly at the occurrence, and in that moment Fiddleford can almost believe that Stanford Pines was only a man.

"I didn't even need to look at it," Stanford goes on. "I put my hand up to it, and suddenly I knew what I needed to know. Like it whispered the answer to me."

_And_ the moment's gone. Back to the regularly scheduled My Boss Is Kind Of Insane program.

Later that night, Stanford is asleep at his desk, _again_ , pen trailing off with whatever he was writing in the open journal. Stanford had neat handwriting, really, he did, but for some reason Fiddleford never could quite read a damn thing in those books whenever he saw a page out of the corner of his eye.

The pen bleeds, just a little, onto the page. The ink sinks down into the page and disappears, and he swears there's a whisper of a voice when it does.

Fiddleford shudders and makes his way home. He'd like to forget that.

=<>=

He buried them. He _had_ no choice.

Even still, it had hurt to part with them, a heavy weight in his heart with every shovel of earth he buried over them, every layer of bunkered metal that caged them.

_Rho. Sigma. Tau. I'm sorry._

_I'm so sorry._

=<>=

In the end, he knew he couldn't bear to part with Rho. Rho, his first. The beginning of his end. To willingly discard it in such a way was, unfortunately, beyond his will. Someone would need to take it off his hands, someone he trusted.

=<>=

Destroy them. _Destroy them._

_You wouldn't. You wouldn't, you wouldn't, you **can't** -_

But he could. Stanley had held the book by its spine- graceless, harsh, _disrespectful_ -

-and put his lighter under it.

And Stanford had felt the creeping, crackling, terrible sensation that he was being burned alive.

=<>=

The damn thing's as destructible as a cockroach. How many times had he accidentally knocked the thing into something sharp, or damn near spilled a beer, or worse, a coffee on it? But no matter what, the journal is as right as rain by tomorrow. The government could finally snap and nuke the Shack, and his brother's spooky fucking voodoo diary would still be standing.

The thing had even taken a bullet, back in the day. Stanley stopped carrying it with him after that. It seemed to prefer the basement, anyway, as much as a Most Definitely Neither Cursed Nor Alive object could _prefer_ anything.

=<>=

Gideon hates the journal.

Oh, he values it. He values the power and knowledge it gives him. But one does not need to love something in order to value it, and love the journal he does not.

And he's pretty sure the feeling's mutual.

It vibrates and burns to the touch, to hold it. He'd once spilled just the barest smidge of his stage powders on it by accident, and the thing had slammed shut on his hand like it had teeth.

He'd tried to teach it a lesson. But he learned soon enough that the book could not be punished without risking whatever he did turning back on him twice over.

And it hides things from him, he knows it. He'd been foolhardy to steal a page from right out of it, and the thing had clammed up ever since. It started getting harder to open. It started skipping pages, and some pages refuse to turn entirely.

All the while it taunts him, insultingly pristine no matter what he does to it, the number 2 sitting in the palm of it's hand like a command.

It haunts his dreams, this number. A terrible conviction to find, claim, _unite_. Then, and only then, would he finally have what he desired.

=<>=

Stanley can't sleep anymore without checking on the portal and journal at least once.

The thought always chips away at his mind like obsession until he finally gives in and takes just one look, and the mounting migraine doesn't end until he opens up the journal.

Sometimes he reads it. It quickly became his new, shameful habit, this parody of night reading.

When his fingers glide across the graceful writing, he swears he can hear his brother's voice right beside him.

=<>=

A million worlds away, Stanford Pines never stopped hearing the whisper of his brother's voice, just out of reach.

=<>=

He hadn't really meant it. Which is probably why he's still alive.

He'd just gotten so _angry_. Slaving at a broken door through space-time on a third of the instructions.

He barely made it a millimeter into the tear before his branded shoulder started screaming with pain like something was trying to tear his arm off.

=<>=

Once, Dipper fell asleep with the Journal open on his chest, and had dreams of the monsters within, narrated by the strangely, implacably familiar voice of an unknown man.

It was weird, but not _too_ weird? It was strange to describe. Mabel didn't understand. 

_Of course she didn't understand,_ the journal whispers. _No one ever understands._

How could he explain that he'd felt a six fingered hand on his shoulder, and a voice that smiled like they'd known eachother all their lives?

How could he explain that he could hardly bare to part with the journal because it's whispers felt like an old friend he never had?

How could he explain that when he went without it, those steady whispers would turn to paranoia, a drowning rise of _lostscaredlostlostlostlost **L O S T**_

until he comes back for the journal, and it's pages flip bright and crisp to eagerly accept another addition to its pages.

And it never runs out of pages for him to write in, or new knowledge to reveal to him every time he does.

=<>=

That Pines family. Taking everything away from him. Even his most prized possession.

Ever since Gideon ran into that Dipper Pines, the journal's been getting feisty. Ending up in strange places.

Like it's trying to escape.

=<>=

Stanford Pines closes his eyes and hears a voice- a young boy ever starved for knowledge, a frantic mind so like his own.

He can't help but smile, if not a little sadly, at the thought, and the answers he would have given this boy drift in the voice of his mind.

He can almost imagine laying a hand on the shoulder of a hard-won apprentice, and a voice that smiles like they've known eachother all their lives.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> dr stanford filbrick pines, phd, phd, phd, etc.: surely if i make books with my bare hands, name them, value them like my children, pour all my soul into them, write eldritch physics breaking sciences in them, and literally shed my blood, sweat and tears in their pages, nothing at all odd will happen


End file.
